


Adora Goes Off On Hordak

by CountDorku



Series: Swear-Ra [3]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Gen, Past Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Post-Canon Fix-It, Salt, Swearing, hordak stans keep out, in which i go off about badly written redemption arcs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:08:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26052439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CountDorku/pseuds/CountDorku
Summary: Hordak receives a harsh lesson in what redemption actually involves.
Relationships: Adora & Hordak (She-Ra)
Series: Swear-Ra [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1810189
Comments: 27
Kudos: 20





	Adora Goes Off On Hordak

“Hordak,” said Adora bluntly, “what are you doing here in Brightmoon?”

“I wished to speak to you.” The former dictator’s voice was as soft as it would get. “I realise that our history has been…tumultuous.”

Adora raised an eyebrow. Calling it ‘tumultuous’ was like calling space ‘big’ or Catra in a bad mood ‘unpleasant to be around’: it wasn’t _inaccurate_ , but it failed to convey the true scale of the situation.

Hordak, to his credit, seemed to realise the absurdity of that understatement. “However, if it is…if it is possible, I would like to consider you a friend.”

“No.”

Hordak flinched backwards.

“Look, Hordak. I hate to break it to you…but our connection is not founded on a robust foundation of mutual respect. It is founded on you having realised, twenty-five years too late, that you should not have devoted your life to slaughtering innocents. Just because I didn’t hit you with a sword doesn’t mean I’m going to invite you to a sleepover.”

Hordak was plainly having trouble keeping up. “But…you are one of the few to have truly shown me compassion-”

“Just one question, Hordak: how many people did _you_ show compassion to? Oh wait, I have the list right here.” She mimed pulling out a scroll. “Entry one: Entrapta. Entry two…oh wait, there isn’t one.” She continued her pantomime display, this time going through the motions of tearing the scroll into shreds and throwing it in a fire. “It turns out that, ‘please be nice to me, it was hard work burning down your villages and stealing your children,’ doesn’t play well with _fucking anybody_.”

“I…”

“Or hey, remember when you actually did free yourself? You said, and I quote, ‘I had a life, friends.’ I notice that you didn’t mention that in that life you were a fascist dictator. Or the throne of skulls.”

“I did not have a throne of skulls,” rumbled Hordak.

“Only because it didn’t match your shitty industrial goth aesthetic. But fine, you had a throne made out of a second-hand gaming chair. Same difference as far as I’m concerned.” Adora shrugged. “You turned on your shitty dad because he was unpleasant to _you_. Other people never fucking entered into it, did they? You didn’t realise you’d been in the wrong, you didn’t want to make amends to the people you hurt by stopping them being hurt further. You just realised you’d gotten a crap deal, and you didn’t give a shit about any of the countless people _you_ gave a crap deal to. There is more to redemption than just switching sides! I’ve talked to Catra, Scorpia, my old friends from the Horde, a bunch of other ex-officers, and you know what, Hordak? You were just the same as he was. You treated people like tools to get what you wanted, and you threw them away when they broke.”

“I have already expressed my regrets-”

“This shit? This ‘well I said I was sorry, that should make it better’ crap is why me and Catra didn’t work out! Yeah, you’ve made progress, you’ve become a better person, all that jazz, but _you still hurt people_ – and you don’t get to decide when those people forgive you. It’s honestly pretty fucking offensive that you’ve decided the suffering you’ve caused me, and my friends, and a whole lot of innocent people, is done now and we should all be cool with you.”

“But during the War-”

“During the War, we needed all the allies we could get!” Adora snapped. “I gave you a _minimum_ amount of sympathy at the very end of a conflict that happened _because of you_ and you’ve decided that means we’re best buddies now. You put me and Catra in the line of fire for Shadow Weaver’s fucking A+ parenting. You stole Lonnie, Kyle and Rogelio from their families. You built an army of kidnapped, traumatised children. You killed and maimed and enslaved and tortured your way across Etheria for _longer than I have been alive_ on behalf of your shitty father figure.”

“It was all I knew,” said Hordak.

“You had _twenty-five fucking years_ to learn other things! You never did.” Adora’s eyes blazed. “You never cared enough about other people to try. All you cared about was yourself and your ambitions. Even when you were with Entrapta, you never _changed your methods_. She interceded with you on Catra’s behalf, pleaded for clemency, and what did you do?”

“I-”

Adora cut him off with, “You came up with a way to technically give her what she asked for while still getting what you wanted. You were a fucking trash bastard before you met her and you were a fucking trash bastard to everyone but her when she was with you. You never changed, you never grew, and more importantly, _you never stopped hurting people_. You just added one name to the very short list of people you treated _like_ people, and you never extrapolated that growth to anyone else in the world.” She shook her head. “When you were in power, everyone was just a tool to you – except Entrapta. Now that you’re not in power, suddenly everyone is a unique special person worthy of respect. Which is true, as it happens – but it’s pretty fucking convenient that you suddenly realise this at exactly the point when you are no longer able to treat them like tools.”

Hordak said nothing.

“Anyway, shouldn’t you be in Salineas? You’ve got a lot of rebuilding to do after you, what was it again, oh yeah _burned it down_.”

“Entrapta’s machines can rebuild it more efficiently-”

“Which is why the robots are doing civilian housing,” Adora said firmly. “The reason you, and Octavia, and Grizzlor, and the rest of the Horde officer corps are working on the palace and the like by hand is not because it particularly needs to be rebuilt, but as something of an object lesson: _the shit you do has consequences_. You’re sorry you spent 25 years murdering and enslaving your way across Etheria? Great! But the people you killed are still dead, the buildings you burned are still burned, and now, _now_ , you get to put in some hard yards on fixing it – those parts of it that _can_ be fixed without a time machine, anyway.” Her voice was as hard and sharp and cold as the edge of a sword. “Consider yourself lucky that it’s more important for people to have homes than for you to learn a lesson, or you’d be building the civilian housing by hand as well.”

“I…understand.”

“Look, Hordak.” She laid an almost friendly hand on his shoulder. “If you’re serious about making up for what you’ve done and earning a place on Etheria? You’ve got 25 years of atrocities to make up for. You don’t get to just decide, one afternoon, that you’ve finished and you get to take a day off to ask one of the children you had raised as a weapon if she wants to catch a movie. Now get the fuck out of my house.”

**Author's Note:**

> I saw a post on tumblr talking about how Adora and Hordak should be friends after the series and...no. No, I don't think the murderous tyrant and one of the children he had raised as a cog in his war machine should be friends.
> 
> I actually really want to see the version of Hordak's redemption arc that is in a season 5 that is written well by people interested in telling a good story, instead of the crappy, Catradora-obsessed, barely watchable mess we got, which could not successfully redeem a coupon for 10% off at fucking Wal-Mart. I think there could be some good drama in having Hordak realise that the way Horde Prime is treating him isn't functionally that different from how he treated a lot of Etherians.
> 
> But S5 was terribly written, so instead he got one of S5 _multiple_ "guess I'm good now lol" redemption arcs.


End file.
